[Review] II KUSURI – A good medicine for who?

II KUSURI – A good medicine for who?

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This is a brief review focused in both lyrics and music video of this song. “ii kusuri (いいくすり, lit. Good medicine) brings a heavy melody very comparable to old sounds of DIR EN GREY, just as the MV that resembles to a production of them too. The heavier style, with drives and other vocal tools, make music a great treat for anyone who wants to headbang and pass the time rocking good. But, what about the music content, is this that good? I warn you in advance that it is a very symbolic analysis, with no political opinion on it, just a reading of the lyrics, an interpretation among many others.

The following lyrics was extracted from a translation from this blog so it will be only the part already brought to English.

The MV starts with a powerful drive and the image of a black cat walking down a woman's legs. Here is our first symbolism to understand the dynamics of this song: the cat is a female symbol and the song has a great power in the female universe. Then we have the following lyrics:

"Infant"
I saw you, and noticed
That a pomegranate rots.
I have already been killed.
"Embryo"
maybe I was wrong from the start.

This first stanza is the opening of the song, appealing to English in an energetic expression. The pomegranate is a symbol of fecundity and defloration, usually used when talking about sex and pregnancy. The point of view here don't seems to be of any external character, but internal, maybe an embryo/fetus. The entry quoting infant creates an allegory to be an infantile vision, but the continuation "I saw you and I noticed that a pomegranate rotted" seems to evoke that since the beginning was perceived that the intoxication of the uterus and the organism and how what was fecundated was rotting. "I had already been killed" continues to let the embryo as the narrator of the story, although it was "dead" (separate discussions, I would say only aborted). In the meantime, when one speaks of "embryo," the woman is melted and swallowed by something that resembles a frog, another animal that symbolizes the womb and the ability to give life or death.

Then we go to:

The night [is like] a spiny spiral staircase
hiding from drizzle, sap and silkworms
This isn't love!
This isn't love!

We have a symbolism again. A spiral staircase that is also spiny is symbolic because it represents the elevation, the female fertility and the travel of the soul after the death and human external protection. The part "the night [is like] a spiny spiral staircase" can also be read as "The night / On a spiral staircase full of spines" and, again, carries the idea that the narrative shows a passing soul saying something - many Japanese see abortion as something horrible and unforgivable, DIR EN GREY and other bands have already talked about it in some songs, for example.

Still in this stanza, hiding from the "drizzle, sap and silkworms," ​​alludes to the escape of what is natural, in this case childbirth, and ends by exclaiming that this attitude is not love - an aggressive behave as if that was an excuse, although the woman in the story probably did it to protect herself.

individuals who can not be alone
licking their fingers, fighting with their walking sticks
the insects will laugh, they will laugh
Tonight, give me, my medicine.

The following stanza is even more darker in its criticism; talking about people who can't stand alone and adds "licking their fingers" and "fighting with their walking sticks" which resemble to various things like: small children licking their fingers, elderly canes, but also sexual acts (and ind the context til now, fits much more). At this point in the music video we see the frog floundering again and the cat walking around with insects that looks like flies (a phallic symbol because of the elongated nose), developing a narrative that induces belief in female fertility and sex, inciting that the medicine requested by the narrator is neither a drug nor a mannerism, but an abortive method; bonuses: insects resemble plagues, diseases, very common things in clandestine abortions and use of drugs that destroy the organism, so the laugh may be a debauch of the embryo/fetus because it is a double poisoning.

It is then that the song becomes somber (in the hearing aspect) with the following excerpt:

I want you to answer me, are you in love?
between hungry and morality, I ask to the white night
while the piano plays

This whole part seems to be a vision of what happened from outside; between desire (hungry) and morality (social morality of the moment) someone asked on an innocent night (thus being an unassuming moment of the night) if the woman was in love. It is interesting how in this part of the music video we return the woman dissolving and resuming the human form, showing the cat again and now a hand comes out of the nape of her neck, as if someone was messing with her mind - remember love a lot, huh? But it may also be the same embryo questioning her as before.

So we went back to the first stanza. At this moment the woman resumes her human form and drops a pomegranate full of people on the inside - this scene coincides with the term "embryo" of the lyrics. Only then we continue with the song, after returning to situate who was narrating everything, then, as in a quick transition we have a new speaker, setting the mind of the woman who, now, may be a prostitute - in the Japan there are species of brothels specialized in these things, existing almost like a black trade, but that everyone knows, involving even high schoolers. The stanza is as follows:

Am I selling love for money?
Are you buying love for money?
I don’t know.
I don’t know.

The woman seems to be confused wondering if love can be bought with money. Then we return to the speaker from before, narrating once again from an internal point of view of it:

Until I can touch your heart
I will had disappeared
tonight, give me, my medicine.

With this we have, once again, a declaration of death: before his formation begins to touch it in her heart, like the first kick and movement, it will disappear, because she began the abortive treatment and he knows that the night will receive more.

What conclusion can we take from this song?

It is extremely heavy. In many ways. Approaching a view of the embryo or fetus, Yoshiatsu creates a sinister vibe very similar to the "mazohyst of decadence" of DIR EN GREY (a song with the same point of view). However, DADAROMA still questions more serious points than the simple act of unprotected sex or accidents, it puts money as the key of the story.

We have a narrative about a process of abortion through medicines, but also about a woman whose sex was only a bargaining chip, where she never received love, only desires and money and in the end she needed to protect herself to continue living, assuming that it would be that way better for everybody - an act of love - and therefore freeing herself of what she was doing from the narrator's point of view (the embryo), even if it destroys her from the inside.

It's a quite neutral song on the subject, unlike other bands that stand against or in favor clearly. Yoshiatsu seems only to question such an experience among so many - a prostitute? A lover? There are many interpretations. The fact is that music has a sinister and rather symbolic mood, ending in a moribund acceptance of the lyrical-self that can't survive this "act of love", but is full of ironies to its (im)possible mother.

This is a GOGUNS review.

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